The weather seems good today. A light rain and cloudy afternoon so I decided to walk around the yard. The chillies are inviting with their red color so I picked a handful. We have grown them for the past two years and this is the first time they are in full fruits. Chillies are part of our culture, each household used to have chillies in their backyard before it was comercialized and is readily available everywhere in the market.
Green and White Chillies
Chillies aren't native to the Philippines, it was brought by Spaniards from Mexico where it originated. It would usually take a year for these small chillies to grow and produce abundant crops but they tend to last longer compared to other chillies. To preserve these chillies, farmers used to soak them in coconut vinegar which in time as the chillies degrade it intensifies in flavor. These small chillies are expensive it could sell for $9-$12 per kilogram and is a restaurant staple in our country. Compared to long chillies, this small chillies are used raw or fried, while long chillies are traditionally used for cooking and is dried first before soaking in vinegar to prevent it from stinking.
These are small chillies on the left and dried long chillies on the right on reused glass bottles filled with coconut vinegar.
I don't really plan to write about chillies but this is the first year we harvested much from our garden. In the past years nothing seems to grow well because of the soil's acidity level and last year our vegetables are full of pest and insects. I had ignored my plants this month but since we introduced flowers last year we had lesser problems with insects. Our trees are growing and started to bear fruits too and we did harvest some vegetables.
First fruits of our lemon tree.
First ripe butternut squash harvest.
It's quite sunny this year when we usually had heavy rains in our region. The flowers are full and the bees are busy as if there aren't caterpillars anymore and I cannot wait to harvest more next year.